CHANCELLOR,
Eustathius, physician and surgeon;
born, Chancellorsville, Spottsylvania Co., Va.,
Aug. 29, 1854; son of Dr. James Edgar and
Josephine D. (Anderson) Chancellor; educated in
private schools, Locust Dale Academy, Rapidan,
Va., 1870-72; graduated from University of
Virginia, 1874, M.D., 1876; University of
Maryland, M.D., 1877; St. Louis University,
A.M., 1885; unmarried. Prosector to chair of
anatomy, University of Maryland School of
Medicine, 1878; clinical assistant University
Hospital, Baltimore, 1878; practiced with
father, Charlottesville, Va., 1879-80; located
in St. Louis, 1880; practice limited to skin and
genito-urinary diseases. Professor of cutaneous
and venereal diseases, Beaumont Hospital Medical
College, 1885-90; lieutenant-colonel and medical
director National Guard of Missouri, 1891-97;
delegate Pan-American Congress. Washington,
1893. and City of Mexico, 1896. Member American
Medical Association, Association of Military
Surgeons of the United States, American Congress
of Tuberculosis, Virginia Society of St. Louis,
Psychic Research 8ociety (New York),
Medico-Legal Society of New York, 1895; honorary
member Military Surgeons of Illinois National
Guard, 1893. Democrat. Methodist. Mason, Knight
Templar, Shriner; member Knights of Pythias,
Elks. Contributor to medical journals. Office:
Oriel Bldg., 316 N. 6th St. Residence: American
Hotel.

(Source:
The Book of St. Louisans, Publ. 1912.
Transcribed by Charlotte Slater)

Clayton, Augustine Smith, a
Representative from Georgia; born in
Fredericksburg, Va., November 27,1783; moved
with his parents to Richmond county, Ga., in
1784; was graduated from Franklin college in
1804; studied law and commenced practice in
Franklin county; moved to Athens; selected by
the legislature in 1810 to compile the statutes
of Georgia from 1800; member of the state
legislature and served in both houses; elected a
judge of the superior court in 1819-1825, and
1828-1831; elected as a State's Rights Democrat
to the Twenty-second Congress to fill vacancy
caused by the resignation of Wilson Lumpkin;
reelected to the Twenty-third Congress and
served from January 21, 1832, to March 3, 1835;
died in Athens, Ga., June 21, 1839.[A
Biographical Congressional Directory of the 1st
1774 to the 62nd 1911 Congress; By United States
Congress; Publ. 1918; Donated and Transcribed by
Andrea Stawski Pack.]

STAPLETON CRUTCHFIELD, OF SPOTTSYLVANIA COUNTY, VIRGINIA; COLONEL, & CHIEF OF ARTILLERY, 2D CORPS, A.N.V.
The subject
of this brief memoir was a distinguished
graduate of the Virginia Military Institute. In
common with many alumni of that State-fostered
institution, he sealed with his life's blood the
great principle of primary allegiance to his
native State.

This highly-endowed
and accomplished young Virginian, like
numberless faithful sons of the "Old Dominion"
who fell martyrs in her defense when iniquitously
assailed, was of gentle blood and ancestral
virtue. He also possessed personal qualities,
intellectual and moral, of highest value,
and had achieved, before the war, when scarce
beyond the threshold of manhood, a position
of extraordinary influence. The post of Adjunct
Professor of Mathematics in the Virginia Military
Institute, with the entire duties of the
chair mainly on his shoulders, had been, in 1858,
three years after his graduation, by a disinterested
board of visitors, assigned him,
on the strong recommendation of the
superintendent and faculty, and with the
sanction of the Governor of the
State.
,

A year
or two thereafter, the ever-encroaching spirit
of Northern assumption, expressed in taxation
pernicious to the Southern States, and in the
hostile fury of abolitionism, assumed its
war-aspect, under the political battle-cry
invented by Mr. Seward, of " irrepressible
conflict" between the institutions of the two
sections, and adopted by Mr. Lincoln as the
motto on his banner when elected President by
the Northern multitude. The cotton States justly
jealous, in view of menace so serious, fell back
upon their original rights, never intended to be
relinquished, but rather to be inviolably
secured by the provisions of the Federal
Constitutional compact, and formally withdrew
from that compact on the ground that it had been
violated on the other side, and was now used as
a mere pretext for their ruin. Virginia, true to
her history and relations, as sharing the
interests and institutions of the South, yet
also strongly attached to the compact of union,
of which she was virtually the author,
endeavored to interpose a wise mediatorship
between the confidently threatening Northern
mass and their government on the one side, and
the defensively defiant Southern States on the
other. Unhappily, the stronger section, misled
by presumption into disregard of justice, and
its government in Washington, inflated by power,
would listen to no appeal for delay in behalf of
conciliatory counsels. Utter submission by the
weaker section to the entire demands of its
mightier neighbor, or a vast outpouring of
blood, was the single issue. On this, no people
at all entitled to be regarded as Christian and
free could hesitate, in reliance upon the
Supreme arbiter of right, to accept the latter
alternative.

Mr.
Lincoln's war-proclamation was accordingly
issued. And Virginia, forced by it to decide
between assailant and assailed, virtuously sided
with the latter.

As
became his lineage, his training, his
intelligent patriotism, and his entire
principles as a man and a Christian, young
Crutchfield sprang, at such a crisis, as did
every true Virginian, to the defense of his own,
his native land. Nor did his honorable and
efficient career as a patriot soldier end until
a deadly shot terminated his life at the fatal
pass of Sailor's Creek, between Petersburg and
Appomattox, about four days before the death of
"the lost cause," at the last-named locality.
While we mourn the violent, early removal of one
so young and well adapted to usefulness, we
have, however, to rejoice that he went with "a
good hope through grace," and that he was "taken
from the evil to come." Incalculably less sad
such a departure than the living death
experienced in Virginia, and more dreadfully in
States farther South, by thousands, who have
survived to witness and bear the unrelaxing
malice of the conquering section and its
multitudes, and the relentless vengeance of
their now all-powerful government.

To a
brief memoir of this exemplary young Virginian,
distinguished graduate and officer of the
Virginia Military Institute, faithful soldier,
and Christian martyr patriot, a few pages will
now be devoted, giving some interesting details
respecting his boyhood, student-life, religious
character, scientific attainments, and military
history.

For the
account of his descent and childhood we are
indebted to his only sister, the justly-honored
daughter-in-law of that full compeer of the
world's grandest human benefactors, the late
noble Commodore Maury. This graceful tribute
from a heart so true we give in its own touching
language.

Stapleton Crutchfield was born June
21, 1835, at "Spring Forest," in Spottsylvania
County, Virginia,?the home of his paternal
grandmother, then a widow with a large family,
all under the care of her oldest child,
Stapleton's father. His people were Minors. His
grandmother (paternal) was Elizabeth Lewis
Minor, of "Sunning Hill," Louisa County, who
married Stapleton Crutchfield, a man largely
loved and trusted in his own county of
Spottsylvania, which he represented in the
Virginia Legislature for a series of years. His
maternal grandmother was Barbara Minor, of
"Topping Castle," in Caroline County, who
married William Kemp Gate wood, of Essex County,
and lived at a beautiful home, "Ben Lomond," on
the Rappahannock River. Here her eldest
daughter, Susan Elizabeth Gatewood, was married,
in 1833, to her up-country cousin, Oscar Minor
Crutchfield, and left her river-side home with
him for the plain country life of "Spring
Forest." Her husband was their all in all to his
widowed mother and fatherless brothers and
sisters. He was also universally beloved
throughout the county, and was returned to the
Legislature by unanimous election for well-nigh
thirty years. During all the later years of that
extended term, moreover, he presided as Speaker
over the deliberations of that body, with a
felicity of administrative vigor rarely
surpassed.

In the
boy Stapleton's infancy, when on a visit to "Ben
Lomond," he was baptized by Rev. John P.
McGuire, his grandmother's and mother's pastor,
that pastor himself becoming also a godfather to
the dear child. It is delightful to believe that
the "effectual, fervent prayers" of this
"righteous man" were, long years after, with
other agencies, of much "avail" in bringing the
young man to a recognition of vows made in his
Baptism, and thus becoming by choice "Christ's
faithful soldier and servant unto his life's
end."

He
never knew when he could first read, so early
was it in his childhood; and so fond was he of
reading that not seldom was the derisive term
"book-worm" applied to him.

When
Stapleton was eight or nine years old, an uncle
of his father's died and left to that father,
his favorite nephew-Oscar, a comfortable home
three miles from "Spring Forest" This bachelor
uncle's residence was "the great house" of the
district, being of fine red brick, with a slate
roof, then regarded much as is now a "Mansard."
To Stapleton and his, by this time, several
brothers and one sister, this "Green Branch" was
a paradise, with its mill and pond and meadows
and orchards. There was a large carpenter's
shop, too, where very creditable work was
carried on for farm purposes, by one of the
servants who had been trained to the business,
and in this shop the lad Stapleton spent most of
his time not given to books. He was always
experimenting in mechanics, and succeeded in
making an ingenious little combination of
machinery to be worked by the stream at the foot
of the hill, which to his admiring small
companions, white and black, was very wonderful.
"Even now," says his sister, "can I hear the
music of its shrill little 'click, clack.' He
then essayed a larger work, and with his own
hands, by dint of patient industry, built a boat
to be rowed up and down the mill-pond, a
distance of a mile. To reward his labors, his
delicate mother, fondly affectionate,
sufficiently yielded her fears to allow herself
to be cajoled into the ambitious young artisan's
craft, and be paddled to the head of the pond
among the water-lilies, and down again to the
mill-dam.

With
all his out-door life, his carpentering, his
hunting, fishing, and rabbit-catching, which
made existence to him then one long holiday, he
failed not to find time for reading, and often
spent a long summer's day, on the grass under
the trees, devouring some book. During actual
holidays, when schooldays had come, this mixed
life of sport, work, and reading always returned
with its endless resources and enjoyment

At
about twelve, the self-cultivating boy was sent
to a school some distance off, admirably
conducted by an energetic kinswoman of the
family, Miss E. H. Hill, who contrived
judiciously to manage together a few girls and a
number of boys. Stapleton was her acknowledged
favorite, because of his uniformly correct
deportment and studious habits. His mother, like
most of her class in our dear Virginia, in spite
of delicate health, a large household, and all
the cares incident to farm-life, and
notwithstanding, too, her son's manifold
self-found avocations, had contrived so well
herself to teach him, that wherever he went to
school he proved most thorough in all he had
learned.

Having
stayed nearly two years at the "Mount Airy"
school under Miss Hill, he was transferred to
one of higher grades under the care of his good
godfather, Rev. John P. McGuire, at Loretto,
Essex County, Virginia. Here he took and
maintained a high stand, and was thence
transferred to the Virginia Military Institute,
in August, 1851, being then just sixteen years
old.

For
some reason the isolated world of youths under
rigid military forms, into the midst of which
the boy of previous domestic training was now
thrown, proved to him, at first, uncongenial and
disadvantageous. At any rate, former propriety
of conduct and habits of application gave way to
indifference alike to lessons and to
regulations. Under the strict discipline of the
Military Institute, this state of things could
not be long tolerated. Young Crutchfield was,
therefore, after some months, sent home, as an
unpromising subject for the educational system
of a military school. The .next year, however,
not to distress his mother, he again sought
admission into the Institute, was received into
the lowest of its three classes, and entered
upon that course of assiduous attention to duty,
however distasteful, which, with his superior
abilities and cultivation from childhood, could
not but eventuate in his reaching and holding
the first place in his class.

His
mother and himself were all this while, until
her removal from earthly trials, the dearest
friends, and corresponded with such regularity
and affection as deeply to impress the younger
children. So full were his letters of life and
love, and so neatly and fairly were they
written, that by his mother they were greatly
prized.

"When
our dear mother was dying, in 1853," writes his
sister, "and he was summoned home to see her,
well do I remember his great grief. He begged
she would give him a plain gold ring, with 'My
Mother' engraven inside; and, as she put it on
his finger, he voluntarily promised her never to
touch the wine-cup, nor approach a gaming-table,
snares destructive to so many men of bright
prospects. This promise, it is believed, he kept
with pious strictness to his dying day. Most
touching was it to witness his sad sorrow the
first summer he spent at home after our mother's
death."

Having
achieved two of the Institute classes with
highest distinction, and being at the head of
that to graduate within a year, our young
friend, at about nineteen, received the
compliment, due to his abilities, attainments,
and worth, of being appointed acting Assistant
Professor of Mathematics. In the summer of 1855,
when just twenty years of age, he graduated at
the Virginia Military Institute with the highest
honors of his class, and was at once appointed
Assistant Professor of Mathematics.

During
the three years from the summer of 1855 to that
of 1858 the young assistant professor performed
most satisfactorily, and with increasing
ability, the duties of his position, and at the
end of that term, before the opening of the fall
session of 1858, had conferred upon him the
distinction, eminent, indeed, for a young man of
only twenty-three, of being appointed full
Professor (adjunct) of Mathematics in the
Virginia Military Institute, with the entire
duties of the chair resting mainly upon him.
This honorable post, with diffused study,
original investigation and production, and
remarkable success, he filled until the
war-cloud burst in 1861. At that time there were
probably few men of his age on the continent of
brighter promise.

It was
during this interesting period of his life that
occurred the most important event, perhaps, of
his earthly history; viz., the revival of those
early religious impressions which, received
under a godly mother's prayerful teaching, and
deepened at the devoutly-conducted schools with
which he had been favored, had been well-nigh
obliterated by that worldly habit of mind to
which incautious mortals are prone, especially a
crowd of heedless youths away from the blessed
influences of home. Remarkable, instructive, and
encouraging to all faithful exemplars and
teachers of the revealed "way of life" was the
process by which this superior young man was
brought back to the narrow path conducting
heavenward. He had been reading that racy and
graphic, but not particularly serious, sketch of
boy-life, under the wholesome influence of a
great and Christian soul, though peculiar, like
that of Dr. Arnold, "Tom Brown at Rugby." The
sketch, so natural and vivid, replaced him, as
it were, in his own school-life under the godly,
loving care of his teacher friend, Rev. John P.
McGuire, and thence bore him back to the
pleading piety of his now sainted mother. The
foundations of his spiritual being were stirred
to their depths. Scripture and prayer were his
resources under the strong convictions produced.
Of one or two friends, and especially of the
parish rector, he also sought counsel. The
result was a cordial acceptance of the blessed
gospel as the sure record of a Divine Redeemer,
and personal application to the Lord for
acceptance in the covenant of grace. In
consequence, on a visitation of the parish soon
after, he publicly ratified his infantile
baptismal vows, as one of the confirmed by
Bishop Johns, on the 26th June, 1859.

Thenceforward his life was that of
a devout Christian and consistent, habitual
communicant of the Church. He at once gladly
accepted the superintendency of the parish
Sunday-school, and, until called away, usefully
discharged its duties.

In the
early spring of 1861, war being virtually
declared against the Southern States by Mr.
Lincoln, representing the hostile passions of
Northern and Western millions, Virginia and her
children had, perforce, to prepare for her large
share in the unequal contest, convinced, like
her noble son General Lee, "that she had rights
and principles to maintain, which she was bound
to defend, even should she perish in the
endeavor."

The
superintendent of the Virginia Military
Institute was immediately called to act as one
of a State war-council of three in Richmond.
Stonewall Jackson and his associates of the
Virginia Military Institute and the corps of
cadets were promptly ordered to that capital for
specific duties. Very soon those duties were
assigned in various directions. Jackson was
dispatched to the critical point, as supposed,
of Harper's Ferry, and raised to the rank of
brigadier. Colonels Giiham and Williamson had
committed to them important and appropriate
service, and Prof. Crutchfield, invested with
the nominal rank of major, was, for the
preparatory months of April, May, and June,
assigned to the useful, though not inviting,
task of drilling and preparing for the field a
large number of young men from the University of
Virginia.

The
collision of arms being evidently then at hand,
all were naturally anxious to be in their right
place for action; and Crutchfield's earnest
appeal for effectual assignment was answered by
his being, early in July, 1861, commissioned
major of the 9th Regiment Virginia Artillery
Volunteers, and ordered for duty therewith to
Craney Island, a point then deemed of great
importance for the protection of Norfolk, and
committed to the command of Colonel F. H. Smith,
Superintendent Virginia Military Institute, now
made colonel of the Artillery Regiment, 9th
Virginia Volunteers, of which Crutch-field was
major, and assigned to the defense of that
island fort, believed to be liable to early
assault by ships seeking access to Virginia's
ancient and chief seaport.

The
force at Craney Island consisted of detachments
from several regiments, besides a portion of the
9th Artillery. And as Colonel Smith,
Lieutenant-Colonel Preston, and Major
Crutchfield were all earnest Christian men, they
divided the entire body into three communities
for the purpose of separate religious
instruction and worship, each ministering to his
own charge with fervent and punctual zeal.
Colonel Smith was afterwards honored by the
Governor by being raised to the rank of brevet
major-general of engineers.

After
some experience of the course of events, it was
found that the tug of war lay in other scenes
than the bristling island thus occupied.
Crutchfield, therefore, with the ardor belonging
to his youth, temperament, and convictions,
earnestly sought transfer to active
field-service, and was, accordingly, by the
Governor, after a month or two, appointed
lieutenant-colonel of the 58th Regiment Virginia
Infantry Volunteers, and ordered with it into
West Virginia, where it was necessary to
restrain disaffection, and remedy previous
disaster, and where, in consequence, General R.
E. Lee was now in chief command. The
difficulties and hardships of the campaign in
that quarter during the fall and winter told
severely upon the constitution of our young
colonel. It therefore became essential that he
should have hospital care, and be sent inward on
sick-leave. He was about this time obliged to
decline the full colonelcy of the 16th Virginia
Infantry Volunteers, to which he had been
elected.

In the
early spring of 1862, the invalid
lieutenant-colonel was sufficiently recovered to
be restless again for active service, and now
found his congenial sphere. Stonewall Jackson,
always extremely fond of Crutchfield, and
holding him in high esteem, needed an efficient
chief of artillery. Requisite communications
passed on the subject, and the result was that
the younger officer applied for by General
Jackson was appointed colonel of artillery,
ordered to report to General Jackson, and
assigned to the important post of his chief of
artillery. Arriving soon after the opening of
that marvelous campaign of the grandest of all
lieutenant-generals, Colonel Crutchfield, with
the comprehensive vigor of his fertile and
earnest mind, discharged with marked success the
arduous duties devolving upon him, and
contributed his full share to those bold, quick
strokes of the master maneuver by which Fremont,
Banks & Co. were sent reeling towards
Washington, and the victorious 2d Corps was left
free to make for McClellan's rear at Richmond
with the speed almost as of steam, and to fall
upon it with the suddenness and power of a
thunderbolt Then in the sanguinary seven-days'
conflicts, which broke the spirit of the
misnamed young Napoleon and his hosts, and sent
them crouching under cover of inaccessible
gunboats far down James River, Crutchfield's
genius and energy aided not a little the
wondrous efficiency of Jackson's corps.

So,
too, was it in the speedily-following Jacksonian
chastisement of the adventurous
political-General Schenck at Cedar Mountain, and
of the ridiculously-boasting Pope at second
Manassas. To Crutchfield's ever industrious and
judicious management of his portion of that most
complex arm, the artillery, with its manifold
objects of attention, officers, men, guns,
carriages, ammunition, horses, harness, and all
corresponding necessary supplies, and the
selection, besides, of battle positions, and
having his telling arm well posted and plied
therein, was due more than small credit for
those great achievements. The same is also true
of the capture of Harper's Ferry by Jackson in
the late summer of 1862, under cover of General
Lee's crossing the Potomac at Leesburg and
feigning to menace Washington. Then in the
bloody fight at Sharpsburg, amazing in the fact
that twenty-seven thousand Confederates stunned
and disabled nearly one hundred thousand
Federals, the well-managed artillery contributed
much to the mighty part performed by Jackson and
his corps.

At
Fredericksburg again, 13th December, 1862,
Crutch-field and his artillery, with Jackson on
the Confederate right, grandly aided the
destructiveness with which that hero hurled back
the immense multitude sent by Burnside to
overpower that wing of General Lee's army.

Efficient in meeting the difficult
questions of forage, etc., during the quiescence
of an inclement winter, no less than in
discharging all duty under the excitements of
campaigning, our chief of artillery succeeded in
keeping his arm in condition for service through
the trying winter of 1862-63. So that on the
opening of the contest with the great battle of
Chancellorsville, May 2, 1863, he was ready,
with a thoroughly-prepared artillery force, to
accompany General Jackson, and to share with him
the peril and the glory of there contributing so
largely to the defeat of "fighting Joe" Hooker,
with his thrice-overmatching numbers.

At
priceless cost, even Jackson's life invaluable,
it is known that great victory was purchased.
And, though not at his side, yet, about the same
moment, severely wounded was his faithful friend
and trusted artillery chief, Colonel
Crutchfield. From the field the same ambulance
bore them together. Neither knew who was his
fellow-sufferer until a few feint words on
either side revealed them to each
other.

While
the wound of the immortal commander of the 2d
Corps, Army of Northern Virginia, proved, after
a few days, fatal, that of his able and
efficient artillery chief was found to be, not
indeed mortal, but a long while disabling. When
sufficiently recovered from the great nervous
shock to be removed any considerable distance,
he was sent to Lexington for assiduous nursing,
and to be under the skillful treatment of that
eminent surgeon, Dr. McGuire, Sr., then
post-surgeon at Lexington. For a number of
months the shattered bones, nerves, etc., of the
leg not only caused to the sufferer extreme and
prostrating pain, but the remarkable slowness
with which they seemed to take on healthy action
toward readjustment and restoration, impressed
the experienced surgeon with the conviction that
his patient could never again be fit for field
service. Under this state of facts the Board of
Visitors of Virginia Military Institute
unanimously elected the wounded colonel of
artillery to the chair of Natural Philosophy,
etc., which Stonewall Jackson's lamented death
had left vacant, and it was by Colonel
Crutchfield accepted under the idea that for
field duty he was permanently disabled.

To the
surprise of all, however, great improvement in
his condition supervened, during the winter of
1863-64, so that feeling himself again adequate
to duty with the army, he could no longer be
persuaded to forego the presentation of himself
for assignment to suitable service where most
important. His old post was no longer open for
resumption by him. On the death of the unmatched
lieutenant-general who had commanded the 2d
Corps, General Lee determined that of that
corps, and of the 1st, commanded by Longstreet,
there should be formed a third, of which General
A. P. Hill should be the lieutenant-general
commanding, while Long-street should, as before,
command the 1st, and Lieu tenant-General Ewell
the 2d. Colonel E. P. Alexander was promoted,
and became brigadier-general and chief of
artillery, 1st Corps. Colonel
A. S. Long became, in like manner,
brigadier-general and chief of artillery, 2d
Corps, and Colonel R. L. Walker,
brigadier-general and chief of artillery, 3d
Corps.

No fit
place thus remained with the army in the field
for the efficient 2d Corps' chief of artillery,
so long unavoidably absent that his post had
necessarily been assigned to another;
well-earned promotion also had he thereby failed
to receive.

Richmond being constantly
the objective-point aimed at by the Washington government and its army and navy of invasion, it was of course essential there should be always ready a sufficient and well-officered force defending the lines around this city. To the command of an important portion of these defenses was Colonel Crutchfield at once assigned, when in person he reported for duty to the adjutant-general, and requested some adequate and useful active service. Thus it was that he missed the great battles of 1864, from the Wilderness to second Cold Harbor, in which Grant with his two hundred thousand was so tremendously butchered and beaten off by General Lee and his primary fifty thousand. Still, in common with his fellow-defenders of the Richmond lines, on occasion, such as the cavalry dash after Stuart's death, to surprise and carry the works, etc., Crutchfield found need there for all that he possessed of sagacity, courage, and skill. Only by the exercise of such qualities on the part of his associates and himself were several such attempts at surprise and capture effectually frustrated.
When General Grant,
marvelously outgeneraled by General Lee and
beaten away down to City Point, yielded his
famous purpose to " fight it out on" the direct
" line" to Richmond, and substituted, therefore,
the investment of Petersburg, the defensive line
at Richmond became of even greater importance,
inasmuch as general Lee's reduced force could
spare but a handful to oppose the large
threatening body which Grant might leave from
his reinforced masses, shattered as they had
been, on the north bank of James River. His main
body it was essential General Lee should meet
and counteract in their attempt upon Petersburg.

Active
movements and vigorous fighting occurred from
time to time on the Richmond lines, as well as
on those around Petersburg, during the fall of
1864 and winter of 1865, and in these, so far as
they involved his post of service, Colonel
Crutchfield with the brave men, his companions,
bore an efficient part.

Thus came the
early spring of 1865, witnessing increase of
want and diminution of strength in the Confederate
men, individually, and in their numbers and
ability as an army. The barbarous policy of
devastation in productive districts which Grant,
Sherman, etc., had adopted, and the kindred plan
of giving five Federals for one Confederate, Grant's
suggestion of genius, the notorious scheme
of "attrition," were severely telling on
the gallant defenders of the rights of their
States, their altars, and their firesides, and
reducing to dimensions wholly inadequate their
organized army. The alternated line of
over thirty miles from the northern side of Richmond
around to the southern and western sides of
Petersburg, affording in many places scarce
one defender to ten paces, was, on the
morning of Sunday, April 2, 1865, broken by a
combined charge of the enemy at a point
southwest of Petersburg.

Only
the extraordinary genius, self-possession, and
power of General Lee enabled him to hold at bay
the enemy's surging masses at such an hour, and
get his own troops, scattered as they were,
within an interior line, which his foresight had
provided. Within that line, however, they were,
to a wonderful extent, securely gotten, so that
again were the swollen numbers of his adversary
effectually defied. Still, it was obvious the
day had arrived for evacuating Petersburg, and
with it, by consequence, Richmond. Dispatches
were accordingly sent by General Lee to the
Executive and War Department in Richmond, with
requisition for abundant supplies to be sent by
railroad to Amelia Court-House, whither the
commanding general would hasten with his force,
and where it was directed all the troops in and
around Richmond should also rendezvous. There
accordingly met, by Wednesday forenoon, April 5,
1865, all that remained of the glorious Army of
Northern Virginia, including the gallant General
Ewell, who had for some time been commanding at
Richmond; General Custis Lee, with an important
body of Richmond defenders, armed artisans,
etc., and Colonel Crutchfield under them,
controlling an extemporized brigade, and acting
as brigadier.

From
some cause no supplies, so essential for
famishing men and animals, arrived, and there
from resulted the greatest difficulties
conceivable. Processes of relief had to be
extemporized, which necessitated delay and
correspondent loss of precious time, every
moment of which should else have been employed
in hastening to the mountains.

This
loss of time was rendered more perilous by the
fact that a dispatch from army headquarters to
the authorities in Richmond, indicating General
Lee's numbers and route, was in the city
mislaid, and fell into the enemy's hands. The
Confederate plan was therefore known, as
otherwise it could not have been; and hence
unusual activity characterized the enemy in
driving forces ahead to obstruct the advance of
our army on its ascertained route, and others in
pursuit to harass, where possible, its
obstructed rear.

From the nature
of the case, the less seasoned and disciplined troops,
from Richmond, under their commanders, interspersed
with a few organized bodies of
the hardy veterans of General Lee's long-tried army,
had to bring up the rear. It was scarcely
possible that men, so long mainly stationary, should
keep up, in forced marches, with soldiers
whom habit had rendered, under Jackson and
others, entitled to the designation "foot cavalry."
Thus it happened that while these latter,
the more thoroughly trained portion of
our army, had, for the most part, to push on
with vigor at night, get into position, form line
of battle, and fight all day, the less active portion,
assisted by such of what might be termed
the "regulars" of the Southern force as could
be spared from the front, had to bring up the
rear, which was supposed less likely to be assailed
by any formidable array of the enemy. The
inference was, no one dreaming of the secret
of our course having been gotten by the enemy,
through a dispatch mislaid in Richmond,
that their main endeavor would be to
obstruct our progress by a strong cavalry force,
so as to allow the main body of the enemy to
come up, as advised by the cavalry, and cut off
our advance toward the mountains.

There
proved, however, an obstruction in the way of
the rear half of the Confederate column, which
the knowledge possessed by the enemy prevented
their overcoming with adequate promptness, and
which placed them almost inevitably within* the
destructive power of an immense pursuing body of
the enemy. That obstruction was the well-nigh
impassable mud in the road and along all
parallel tracks across the Valley, and at the
defile road of Sailor's Creek, a small stream
which empties into the Appomattox River. Much
rain had fallen, rendering the passage of
wagons, etc., everywhere difficult, and here, of
course, peculiarly so. Moreover, the passage of
all the leading half of our column, with its
artillery and train, had rendered doubly
difficult, and well-nigh impracticable, the miry
Valley and defile of the Sailor's Creek passage.

Here,
then, utterly hindered and unavoidably more or
less confused, was all that portion of our
column exposed to surrounding and overwhelming
assault. And in this condition it was virtually
surrounded and severely attacked.

Able
and intrepid commanders did, in the emergency,
all that could be achieved under such conditions
with troops a number of whom were recently from
hospitals and workshops. The gallant and maimed
General Ewell, with accustomed vigor, directed
preparations for meeting the enemy at all
points. General Custis Lee, in personal command
of the mixed organizations from Richmond,
supervised the arrangement of them, and
valiantly directed them in the fight, while
General Richard Anderson, much confided in by
General Lee, had special command of the trained
troops assisting all that rear portion of our
column.

Colonel
Crutchfield, to whom had been committed a
brigadier-general's command of the troops from
Richmond, was at his post, faithfully
endeavoring to preserve order under the severe
pressure of enveloping attack. Confusion
incident to such attack was becoming diffusive,
and it was growing more and more evident some
readjustment of forces must be promptly made.
And having at hand no staff officer to send to
General Custis Lee or General Ewell for orders
and relief, the acting brigadier himself, after
a moment's conference with Major Hardin, a
fellow-graduate of the Virginia Military
Institute, and gallant battalion commander, whom
he saw near, efficiently using against the enemy
his small force, put spurs to his horse and rode
under a furious fire to find one of the generals
commanding, and get, if possible, assistance for
this exposed point, and explanation of plans for
the future. This was the last known of him in
life. A short time after he was found on the
field, not far from where his conference with
Major Hardin had occurred, shot through the
head, and entirely lifeless. Before that night
closed in the whole organized force there had
been compelled to surrender. Generals Ewell and
Custis Lee were prisoners, and such appliances
as they had at the impracticable pass fell into
the enemy's hands. None escaped but a few
hundreds of tough, active, and resolute men,
who, foreseeing the result, made good their
exit, and reached the hard-fighting advance-half
of what remained of the toil-worn and
battle-reduced Army of Northern Virginia.

At the time of his tragic end Colonel Crutchfield was within a month or two of being thirty years old, and it may be with modest confidence affirmed that there was scarcely another man of his age on the continent who excelled him in mental endowments and scientific culture, in faithful gallantry as a patriot soldier, and in the exemplary performance of all relative duties. For six years he had been a devout, consistent, earnest Christian, marked alike by fervency, cheerfulness, and practical activity for others' welfare; and on the minds of his pious friends there can remain no shadow of doubt that his glorious death of momentary pain was a blessed 1 release from miseries unnumbered, in his beloved Virginia and I her Southern sisters subjugated, and a joyful entrance upon the \ privileged condition of the "spirits of the just made perfect."
Rev. Wm. N. Pendleton, D.D. (Source: Biographical sketches of the Graduates and Eleves of the Virginia Military Institute who fell during the war between the States, by Chas. D. Walker. Published 1875. Transcribed and submitted to Genealogy Trails by Linda Rodriguez)